Mossad’s Murderous Reach: The Larger Political Issues

by James Petras / February 22nd, 2010

On January 19 Israel’s international secret police, the Mossad, sent an eighteen member death squad to Dubai using European passports, supposedly ‘stolen’ from Israeli dual citizens and altered with fake photos and signatures, in order to assassinate the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud al Mabhouh.

The evidence is overwhelming: The Dubai police presentation of detailed security videos of the assassins was corroborated by the testimony of Israeli security experts and applauded by Israel’s leading newspapers and columnists. The Mossad openly stated that Mabhouh was a high priority target who had survived three previous assassination attempts. Israel did not even bother to deny the murder. Furthermore, the sophisticated communication system used by the killers, the logistics and planning surrounding their entry and exit from Dubai and the scope and scale of the operation have all the characteristics of a high-level state operation. Furthermore, only Mossad would have access to the European passports of its dual citizens! Only Mossad would have the capacity, motivation, stated intent and willingness to provoke a diplomatic row with its European allies, knowing full well that Western European governments’ anger would blow over because of their deep links to Israel. After meticulous investigation and the interrogation of 2 captured Palestinian Mossad collaborators, the Dubai police chief has stated he is sure the Mossad was behind the killing.

The Larger Political Issues

Israel’s policy of overseas assassination raises profound issues that threaten the basis of the modern state: sovereignty, rule of law and national and personal security.

Israel has a publicly-stated policy of violating the sovereignty of any and all countries in order to kill or abduct its opponents. In both proclamation and actual practice, Israeli law, decrees and actions abroad supersede the laws and law enforcement agencies of any other nation. If Israel’s policy becomes the common practice world-wide, we would enter a savage Hobbesian jungle in which individuals would be subject to the murderous intent of foreign assassination squads unrestrained by any law or accountable national authority. Each and every state could impose its own laws and cross national borders in order to murder other nation’s citizens or residents with impunity. Israel’s extra-territorial assassinations make a mockery of the very notion of national sovereignty. Extra-territorial secret police elimination of opponents was a common practice of the Nazi Gestapo, Stalin’s GPU and Pinochet’s DINA and has now become the sanctioned practice of the US “Special Forces” and the CIA clandestine division. Such policies are the hallmark of totalitarian, dictatorial and imperialist states, which systematically trample on the sovereign rights of peoples.

Israel’s practice of extra-judicial, extra-territorial assassinations, exemplified by the recent murder of Mahmoud al Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room, violates all the fundamental precepts of the rule of law. Extra-judicial killings ordered by a state, mean its own secret police are judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner, unrestrained by sovereignty, law and the duty of nations to protect their citizens and visitors. Evidence, legal procedures, defense and cross examinations are obliterated in the process. State-sponsored, extra-judicial murder completely undermines due process. Liquidation of opponents abroad is the logical next step after Israel’s domestic show trials, based on the application of its racial laws and administrative detention decrees, which have dispossessed the Palestinian people and violated international laws.

when the killers escape detection and capture. The unfettered operation of foreign state-sponsored death squads, carrying out extra-judicial assassinations with impunity, is a serious threat to every critic, writer, political leader and civic activist who dares to criticize Israel.

Mossad Murders: Zionist Fire

The precedent of Israel killing its adversaries abroad, establishes the outer boundaries of repression by its overseas supporters in the leading Zionist organizations, most of whom have now and in the past supported Israel’s violation of national sovereignty via extra-judicial killings. If Israel physically eliminates its opponents and critics, the 51 major American Jewish organizations economically repress Israel’s critics in the US. They actively pressure employers, university presidents and public officials to fire employees, academics and professionals who dare to speak or write against Israeli torture, killing and systematic dispossession of Palestinians.

So far, most critical comments, in Israel and elsewhere, of Mossad’s recent murder in Dubai focus on the agents’ “incompetence”, including allowing their faces to be captured on numerous security videos as they clumsily changed their wigs and costumes under the camera gaze . Other critics complain that the bungling Mossad is “tarnishing Israel’s image” as a democratic state and providing ammunition for the anti-Semites. None of these superficial criticisms have been repeated by the US Congress, White House or the Presidents of the Major Jewish American organizations, where the mafia rule of Omerga, or silence, reigns supreme and criminal complicity is the rule

Conclusion

While the critics bemoan the clumsy Mossad job, making it harder for Western powers to provide Israel with diplomatic cover for its operations abroad, the fundamental issue is never addressed: The Mossad’s acquisition and alteration of official British, French, German and Irish passports of dual Israeli citizen’s underscores the cynical and sinister nature of Israel’s exploitation of its dual citizens in the pursuit of its own bloody foreign policy goals. Mossad’s use of genuine passports issued by four sovereign European nations to its citizens in order to murder a Palestinian in a Dubai hotel room raises the question of to whom ‘dual’ Israeli citizens really owe their allegiance and just how far they are willing to go in defending or promoting Israel’s overseas assassinations.

Thanks to Israel’s use of British passports to enter Dubai and murder an adversary, every British businessperson or tourist traveling in the Middle East will be suspected of links to Israeli death squads. With elections this year and the Labor and Conservative parties counting heavenly on Zionist millionaires for campaign funding, it remains to be seen whether Prime Minister Gordon Brown will do more than whimper and cringe!

“If Israel’s policy becomes the common practice world-wide, we would enter a savage Hobbesian jungle in which individuals would be subject to the murderous intent of foreign assassination squads unrestrained by any law or accountable national authority. Each and every state could impose its own laws and cross national borders in order to murder other nation’s citizens or residents with impunity. Israel’s extra-territorial assassinations make a mockery of the very notion of national sovereignty. Extra-territorial secret police elimination of opponents was a common practice of the Nazi Gestapo, Stalin’s GPU and Pinochet’s DINA and has now become the sanctioned practice of the US “Special Forces” and the CIA clandestine division”.

This was the USA’s policy forever and I’m surprised especially by the part where Pinochet was put chronologically before US SF and CIA activities…unless James is suggesting that before, USA assassinations weren’t “sanctioned” like they are now…then I’d disagree on that count instead.

Of course Israel’s latest actions won’t become common practice for anyone other than the US and Israel (I know that may not be the point)

Neither Gordon Brown nor the leaders of the other European countries concerned need to do more than “whimper and cringe”. The mere fact of naming Israel publicly is damning! And unprecedented! And I don’t think the “Zionist millionaires” can do much about it!

The murder of Al-Mabhouh in Dubai, by the Mossad, is only another episode in a longstanding Israeli practice of extrajudicial assassintion of its opponents, amongst a long catalogue of Israeli acts of state terrorism. The late Professor Israel Shahak and the then chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights stated: “There is nothing new in the fact that Israel is a terrorist state, which, from its inception, has used its intelligence service [the Mossad] to assassinate people on foreign soil with any violence or terror it considers necessary for its ends.”

“Sex is woman’s weapon. Pillow talk is not a problem for her. But it takes a special kind of courage. It is not just sleeping with an enemy. It is to obtain information,” Maj. Gen. Meir Amit (d. 2009), former head of Mossad (1963-68) on his women spies.

“There are thousands of Israeli Sayanim around the world. In London alone, there are about 2,000 who are active, and another 5,000 on the list,” – says Victor Ostrovsky, the veteran Mossad agent. In his book By Way of Deception, Victor wrote that a Sayanim or “the local assistant” must be 100 percent Jewish”.

Gordon Thomas, author of the famous book Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, in his latest article titled Mossad\’s Licence to Kill (Global Research, February 19, 2010) wrote that “the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh bears the hallmarks of the ruthless Israeli intelligence service…… The killing in Dubai is a classic example of how Mossad goes about its work. Al-Mabhouh’s eleven assassins had been chosen from the 48 current kidons (meaning ‘bayonet’ in Hebrew), six of whom are women….”

Names released by Dubai matched seven people living in Israel, raising questions about why the agency would endanger its own people by using their passport data as cover for a secret death squad. This terrorist attack has several similarities to Mossad embarrassment during Netanyahu’s previous term as prime minister, the failed attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in 1997. Two Mossad agents posing as Canadian tourists were captured after injecting Mashaal with poison, and Israel was forced to send an antidote that saved Mashaal’s life. Today Mashaal is Hamas’ supreme leader.

Britain’s Foreign Office summoned Israeli Ambassador Ron Prossor for talks about the stolen passport of Melvyn Adam Mildiner, a dual Israeli-British citizen. Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin admitted on Wednesday that the three stolen Irish passports did have valid numbers. The German and French authorities, too, are conducting investigation of Mossad agents using German and French passports in Dubai. Mossad has a long history of stealing foreign passports and using them to carry-out its false-flag operations. New Zealand convicted and jailed two Israelis in 2005 for trying to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports. Seven of the so-called “Arab hijackers” allegedly involved in 9/11 were found alive in Saudi Arabia. In January 2006, Israel daily Jerusalem Post reported that after Mossad agents were exposed using fake New Zealand and Canadian passports, the German intelligence agency BND stepped in to ensure a steady supply of fake German passports to enable Mossad to place its agents in the Middle Eastern countries.

Gilad Atzmon (an Israeli-born British Jewish citizen, writer and renowned Jazz musician) in an article, titled The Tide Has Changed, posted on his website, wrote:

“The British anger at Israel would be a possitive signal in the right direction if we were not aware of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband investing enormous efforts trying to amend Britain’s ethical stand just to appease Tizipi Livni, Ehud Barak and other Israeli leaders. The British Foreign Ministry’s reaction could almost be deemed a revelation, were we able to forget that just five weeks before Israel launched its lethal criminal attack against Gaza, David Miliband visited Sderot, an Israeli town on the Gaza border to offer his support.

The truth of the matter is tragic. The British political system is paralysed by the Israel Lobby. Like in the USA, British national interests are sacrificed for the sake of dirty Zionist cash. If Britain wants to liberate itself from the Zionist grip and have any prospect of a future, it must move fast and clean the entire list of Zionist infiltrators from its political ranks, government offices and strategic positions. Considering Zionism is a murderous, racist, expansionalist ideology, it is natural to stress that people who are affiliated with Israel and Zionism must be removed immediately from any political, government, military or strategic posts and so on…..”

As we have always thought, the British Foreign Office are a bunch of b******s.

Britain, France, Germany and Australia have protested at the use of their passports in the assassination of Mabhouh. But there are suggestions that foreign governments and security services may have known more about the plot than they are willing to admit.

++ Allegations that Mossad warned Britain in advance have surfaced in the UK-based Daily Mail. The paper claims to have been told that the British Foreign Office and MI6 were informed about the operation before it took place. What the newspaper describes as “a British security source” claims to have met a Mossad agent who spoke of a “courtesy call” prior to the assassination. ++

The Daily Mail continues: “This is a serving member of Israeli intelligence. He says the British Government was told very, very briefly before the operation what was going to happen. There was no British involvement and they didn’t know the name of the target. But they were told these people were travelling on UK passports.”

According to the Daily Mail report, Mossad understood that the Foreign Office would have to “slap them on the wrist,” and that “The British government has to be seen to be going through the motions.”

A Foreign Office spokeswoman denied the report and claimed that the British government was informed about the use of fake British passports only hours before the Dubai police announced it at a press conference. “Any suggestion that we knew anything about the murder in Dubai before it happened, including about the misuse of British passports, is completely untrue,” she said.

“Any interference with British passports is an outrage,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband declared. “We take this case extremely seriously—the integrity of our system is critical.”

He vowed to “get to the bottom” of the affair and has demanded that the Israeli authorities cooperate fully with the UK investigation.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced an inquiry into the use of British passports, and police officers from the Serious Organised Crime Agency have been sent to Israel to interview the UK citizens whose documents were cloned.

Israel’s ambassador, Ron Prosor, was invited to attend a meeting at the Foreign Office. He emerged after a 20 minute session with Sir Peter Ricketts, head of the diplomatic service, in relaxed mood. Prosor said he was happy to cooperate with Sir Peter’s request for a meeting, but added, “I was unable to shed any further light on the events in question.”

He refused to say what was discussed, telling reporters that it was “not the usual way to talk about what happens in those meetings.”

Miliband also refused to reveal what was said. He told the BBC’s Jeremy Vine, “It’s very, very important that we don’t make accusations until we know that they’re well founded.”